Direct evaporative cooling of K-39 atoms to Bose-Einstein condensation

We report the realization of a Bose-Einstein condensate of K-39 atoms without the aid of an additional atomic coolant. Our route to Bose-Einstein condensation comprises sub-Doppler laser cooling of large atomic clouds with more than 10(10) atoms and evaporative cooling in an optical dipole trap where the collisional cross section can be increased using magnetic Feshbach resonances. Large condensates with almost 10(6) atoms can be produced in less than 15 s. Our achievements eliminate the need for sympathetic cooling with Rb atoms, which was the usual route implemented until now due to the unfavorable collisional property of K-39. Our findings simplify the experimental setup for producing Bose-Einstein condensates of K-39 atoms with tunable interactions, which have a wide variety of promising applications, including atom interferometry to studies on the interplay of disorder and interactions in quantum gases.